Rudolph de Harak, Artist and Environmental Designer, 78
DGH
Rudolph de Harak, an influential designer whose many prominent projects
included the timeline and typographic displays for the Egyptian Wing of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the futuristic entryway for the
quirkily embellished office building at 127 John Street in Lower
Manhattan, New York, died on Wednesday, April 24, 2002, at his home in
Ellsworth, Maine, at the age of 78, from complications of bladder
cancer.
Mr. de Harak's graphic and environmental designs for public and private
institutions and exhibitions were rooted in European modern rationalism
but used a playful American vernacular. His design for the John Street
entrance and facade transformed this cold glass and steel building into
a carnival through brightly colored canvas-covered scaffolds that serve
as both shelter and sun deck, a three-story-high digital clock made of
72 square modules with numerals that light up the exact date, hour,
minute and second, and a sci-fi-inspired neon-illuminated tunnel leading
to the front door.
For the centerpiece of the Cummins Engine Museum in Columbus, Ind., Mr.
de Harak conceived a display he called an "exploding" diesel engine; it
hangs by wires in midair, revealing its every part, including all the
tiny nuts and bolts. It was one of his many approaches to extracting
useful, fascinating information from the most minute details.
His photographic timeline and information signs and panels for the
Metropolitan's Egyptian Wing, commissioned by the architect Kevin Roche,
are still in use after two decades. This project combined his lifelong
passion for clear communication and elegant typography. The project
involved exhaustive research of every nuance of the magnificent
collection and took 10 years to complete.
Rudolph de Harak was born in Culver City, Calif., on April 10, 1924.
While he was in his preteens, his family moved to New York City, where
he attended the School of Industrial Arts. After serving in the infantry
in World War II, he returned to Los Angeles to join a small art service
and advertising agency and pursued graphic design.
Finding it hard to earn a living, he moved once again to New York in
1950. He took a job as promotion art director of Seventeen magazine and
later started his own small design office in 1952. At the time Mr. de
Harak did illustrations for Esquire, collages consisting of photographs,
drawings and found materials that he referred to as jazzlike
improvisations. Not coincidentally he used this same method when
designing jazz album covers for the Columbia, Oxford, Circle and
Westminster labels.
He once said about his design method, "I was always looking for the
hidden order, trying to somehow either develop new forms or manipulate
existing form." The nearly 350 covers he designed throughout the 60's
for McGraw-Hill paperbacks, with subjects like philosophy, anthropology,
psychology and sociology, offered him a place to test the limits of
conceptual art and photography. He used the opportunity to experiment
with a variety of approaches inspired by Dada, Abstract Expressionism
and Op-Art. His McGraw-Hill paperbacks, especially, had a strong
influence on contemporary graphic design.
Not content to work in one medium or genre, Mr. de Harak created
exhibitions, including a celebration of American sports for the 1970
Osaka World's Fair. He designed shopping bags for the Met and
delivery-truck graphics for The New York Times. He had commissions from
the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Park Service, the National
Endowment for the Arts and the United States Postal Service.
His spirit of restlessness carried over to his own firm. "He would build
up an office and fire them all, and then he'd start up again," the
designer Thomas Geismar of Chermayeff & Geismar recalled.
Mr. de Harak taught graphic and exhibition design at Cooper Union for 25
years and was a visiting professor at Yale, Alfred University, Parsons
School of Design and Pratt Institute. In 1993 he received a medal for
lifetime achievement from the American Institute of Graphic Artists.
He is survived by his wife and two sons, Bruno and Dimitri, and three
stepsons, Doug, Jon and Mark Sylbert.
In his late 60's he sold his design practice and left New York with his
wife, moving to a home that they designed and built in Maine. He played
jazz saxophone and made and exhibited paintings that were hard-edged
geometric forms, which, he said, were not abstract "because geometry is
as real as faces and landscapes."